International Trade committee  I'll try to respond to that. I think there are a number of different avenues we're going to be looking at when it comes to dispute settlement. The main dispute settlement between states that will be in the agreement is the one I was referring to earlier. That will be a modificat

International Trade committee  Yes, I think that is an important consideration of their assessment of the negotiation with Canada. They already have an agreement with Mexico, but the agreement they have with Mexico is a far more modest one than the one we are aiming to achieve here. I think Canada is in a fa

International Trade committee  That's certainly one of the objectives we have, and we suspect that we wouldn't have too much difficulty agreeing to that. We do have that in some of our previous agreements, but in most areas we would see that if the EU went on to negotiate with another trading partner and took

International Trade committee  I have to confess that some of that is a little hazy now, since they just recently passed the Lisbon Treaty and are sorting out some of their respective roles within the European Union. Generally, when we reach agreement on all of the substance of the negotiations, that will be b

International Trade committee  Yes, thank you. We are paying a lot of attention to the whole chapter we're going to have on the dispute resolution mechanism. We've looked at the kind of dispute settlement process we have under the NAFTA and we've looked at the process under the WTO, and both of those now go qu

International Trade committee  Thank you. I would say that we're looking at it from both perspectives, actually. First of all, we're starting with the principles of what are we trying to achieve, which is effective entry into each other's market without these kinds of barriers, so we're designing a system tha

International Trade committee  Within the EU negotiations we're certainly not addressing any of those issues, and full flexibility for the Government of Canada will continue to be maintained in those areas. We have had some criticism, particularly on the application of visas against the Czech Republic, but it

International Trade committee  Yes, but I would like to respond. Certainly that whole issue has come up. The whole question of whether we might be able to improve some of our existing situations between provinces through this kind of negotiation is evident. I think there is the potential to deal with some of

International Trade committee  We agreed with the EU early on in negotiations that instead of having side agreements, as we had previously in some of our FTAs, we would have both labour and environment as chapters inside of the agreement this time around. That was partly a matter of accepting that the EU tend

International Trade committee  We have a very broad coverage to what we're trying to achieve in regulatory cooperation that excludes very little. It certainly covers all of the kinds of issues that you've been describing—all of the goods issues, including sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers

International Trade committee  Starting with regulatory cooperation, the whole regulatory area, I think we will be quite successful. In fact, we've already essentially finished the chapter on regulatory cooperation. As I mentioned earlier, that's the first time we've ever seen a chapter on regulatory cooperati

International Trade committee  Yes, we have. We're certainly aware of the level of interest in that particular issue from the east. Some of our highest priorities in the goods area generally include wood and wood products. We've certainly made that clear to the European Union. The other thing we made clear is

International Trade committee  I could answer that one. No, we have never seen anywhere near this kind of involvement of provincial or territorial officials in any previous negotiation. I think that's the case, not just in Canada, but it would be the same among other countries that have the same kind of federa

International Trade committee  Well, that's certainly been a key part of the discussions on that issue. The provinces have been leading the way in wanting that issue to be one of our top priorities. There's a great desire in many of the provinces to have increased labour mobility into their provinces to addres

International Trade committee  Well, we're not looking to have a one-size-fits-all approach to this. In some cases we do expect we will harmonize our regulations with the European Union. In other cases they may harmonize theirs to ours, but those will probably be fairly limited cases. The more common outcome w